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Former NATO Commander Wesley Clark Nears White House Decision
Arab News, Reuters
WASHINGTON, 31 August 2003 — Former NATO commander Wesley Clark said on Friday the United States is “headed in the wrong direction” but he is uncertain about whether to enter the 2004 presidential race, promising a decision “in the next week or two.”
With many Democrats predicting his imminent entry in the party’s crowded field of nine candidates, Clark said his wife was “not on board” yet and he was still evaluating whether there was room for him in the race.
“It’s a complete career transition from one thing into another. You have to get the timing right on it and then you go with it,” Clark said in an interview. He said it was not too late for him to make a presidential bid, even though the first votes will be cast in less than five months.
“You have to make sure that there is really an opening, and we’re still in the process of doing that,” he said. “You have to make sure this is the right way to make a contribution.”
The retired four-star general, who has crisscrossed the country this year like an aspiring candidate and been outspoken in his criticism of President George W. Bush and the war in Iraq, said he believed supporters were being patient with his deliberations.
“No one has given up on me yet,” he said. Two groups have begun campaigns on the Internet to draft Clark into the race, with one of the groups passing the $1 million mark this week in pledges to a theoretical Clark campaign.
Clark, who served as NATO commander from 1997 to 2000, said he was being drawn into the race by concerns about the country’s direction “both at home and abroad.” On the domestic front, he criticized Bush’s tax cuts as an unnecessary gift for the wealthy that has bled crucial programs like education and health care. “We don’t need it, we’re just borrowing money that our children will have to repay,” he said.
Clark said Bush rushed into war in Iraq even though the country was not an imminent threat to the United States and did not adequately plan for the war’s aftermath, leaving troops at risk from a “critical mass of terror that is growing in Iraq.”
“The administration hasn’t leveled with the American people on the time frame, the cost and the degree of difficulty” in a post-war Iraq, he said.
The former Rhodes scholar and Vietnam veteran, who finished first in his class at West Point, said he was not trying to rush a decision on the White House.
“I’m just trying to work my way through this,” he said. “I’m not a politician and there is a lot required here to consider.”
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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